The hiring freeze President
Donald Trump
ordered on his first full working day in the White House is threatening to compromise the safety of correctional officers, delay payments to veterans and prevent disabled and retired Americans from getting their Social Security checks on time, union officials and government workers say.

Federal agencies typically lose about 10% of their workforce every year, and, nearly three months into the Trump administration, the freeze’s impact is beginning to be felt.

About one out of 10 positions at the Bureau of Prisons are vacant, according to a spokesman, and at some facilities, medical personnel are working additional overtime and correctional officers are spread more thinly, prison officials and workers say.

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In mid-March, Veterans Affairs Secretary
David Shulkin
ordered that jobs tied to processing benefits claims wouldn’t be affected by the freeze. But the previous six weeks of no hiring, combined with high turnover and increased claims, pushed the backlog of veterans’ claims to recently top 100,000. The backlog was over 600,000 in early 2013 before the department made a concerted effort to reduce it below 100,000 starting last year.

Mr. Trump’s order also prolonged a hiring freeze at the Social Security Administration, which has been hit by budget constraints in recent years. Offices around the country are operating fewer hours and with longer lines, according to union officials.

The result: In attempting to fulfill one campaign promise—to “drain the swamp” and reduce the size of the federal government—Mr. Trump is potentially undermining other promises, including his pledges to champion veterans and law enforcement. In some cases, the freeze is disproportionately affecting voters who propelled Mr. Trump into office, including the 60% of veterans who voted for him over Democrat
Hillary Clinton,
according to exit polls.

If every worker at the Trump Hotel left the front desk, Mr. Trump “would hire new front desk people to register those guests,” said
J. David Cox Sr.
, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. “You can’t run a business and you can’t run a government with a hiring freeze.”

The White House referred requests for comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which didn’t respond to questions.

Some conservatives have defended Mr. Trump’s order, saying the federal workforce is bloated and that the freeze allows time to evaluate how to operate federal agencies more efficiently.

“The administration has a very significant plan to reform government,” said
Rachel Greszler,
senior policy analyst in economics and entitlements at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. “It doesn’t make sense to be putting people in place in agencies they might reform down the road.”

Mr. Trump’s Jan. 23 memo called for a 90-day freeze, after which the OMB director was to recommend a “long-term plan” to reduce the federal workforce. But OMB Director
Mick Mulvaney
wasn’t confirmed until 25 days after Mr. Trump signed the memorandum—nearly a third of the time the president had allotted for crafting that plan.

OMB didn’t respond to a question about whether Mr. Mulvaney planned to stick to that timeline.

Amid a tumultuous first two months of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the hiring freeze and its effects on the federal government has largely stayed out of the spotlight. While the order drew criticism from both parties when it was first announced, response since has been fairly muted.

President Donald Trump shows the Executive Order withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in January 2017. He also signed another Executive Order concerning the U.S. Government hiring freeze.
Photo:
Pool/Getty Images

Veterans are heavily affected by the hiring freeze, experts say, because they are often hired by the federal government, and currently make up roughly a third of the federal workforce. Moreover, the VA, which administers benefits to veterans and their families, also has an unusually high number of vacancies to fill—45,000, of which 37,000 were exempted from the hiring freeze, according to Mr. Shulkin.

“The freeze is just one more uncertainty, one more cloud you’re placing on the VA health care system,” which already struggles to compete for top talent, particularly for medical positions, said
Marilyn Park,
legislative coordinator at the AFGE union on VA issues.

Worried about unfilled vacancies,
Eric Young,
the head of the union representing correctional officers, asked for a tour of the prison in Lompoc, Calif. On the tour, Mr. Young said he was told one officer was supervising about 180 inmates and another was in charge of 400 inmates spread between three floors. He said the standard correctional officer routinely guards no more than 130 inmates, and the ratio is half of that in high-security prisons.

“It reminded me of the ever-present danger our officers face daily,” Mr. Young said. “The administration, with the power of the purse, is playing around with our ability to maintain safe prisons.”

A spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons,
Justin Long,
said the agency “continues to operate safe and secure federal prisons all across the country.”

Mr. Long noted that federal prisons are less crowded because the inmate population has decreased from a high of nearly 220,000 inmates in 2013 to fewer than 190,000 today. He declined to answer specific questions about staffing guidelines at Lompoc or other locations, saying it varies depending on the levels of security and medical care.

There were about 4,300 vacancies at the 122 facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons as of the end of February, which Mr. Young said is higher than it has been in several years.

Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep.
Cheri Bustos,
both Illinois Democrats, and Rep.
David McKinley,
a West Virginia Republican, have urged Attorney General
Jeff Sessions
in a letter to exempt the Bureau of Prisons from the hiring freeze. A spokeswoman for Mr. Sessions,
Sarah Isgur Flores,
said he is reviewing the letter from the senators.

Among the examples of staffing shortages cited in the letter or in reports and correspondence provided by the Council of Prison Locals union:

—A medical facility in Butner, N.C., has at least 20 vacant nursing positions, forcing the current staff to work overtime. A letter from Warden J.C. Holland in February to the staff said nurses who refuse to work overtime could be fired. “I know many of you are frustrated and morale is low,” the warden wrote, acknowledging the staffing shortage. Mr. Holland didn’t respond to phone calls and emails from The Wall Street Journal.

—The federal transfer center in Oklahoma City, which houses inmates before more permanent prison assignments, recently reported 59 unassigned posts. “This is unacceptable, and Warden (John) Fox is putting the safety of every person that works at this facility in jeopardy,” according to a letter from the union representing the workers. Mr. Fox didn’t respond to inquiries from The Wall Street Journal.

The Social Security Administration, before Mr. Trump’s administration, had already suffered years of budget cuts and a hiring freeze that began last year. In the last three months of 2016, the agency saw a 48% increase in busy rates and a 38% increase in waiting times for its phone service. Offices also lack enough people to meet their goals in processing disability and retirement checks, according to union officials.

“The agency is doing things they never did before, like sending people home without any service,” said
Witold Skwierczynski,
president of a wing of AFGE that represents 25,000 Social Security employees, referring to field offices meant to process retirement and disability claims.

The SSA typically loses about 1,850 staffers in a six-month period, and the number of claims it must process is on the rise as the baby boomer generation retires.

“You can’t just establish a hiring freeze and expect us to continue to do all our work,” Mr. Skwierczynski said.

There have been 30 hiring freezes since 1940, and the size of the executive branch workforce has hovered between two million and three million since 1962, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

But critics said Mr. Trump’s hiring freeze was unusual in its lack of specificity, and included vague language that left hiring for certain departments up to the agencies’ interpretation.

“There’s really no deliberateness to it,” said
Paul Light,
a professor of public service at New York University.